Leading UK attorneys have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader proposed that significant quantities of legally settled families must be removed from the country.
Divisive Remarks on Legal Status
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While Badenoch initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later reverted to current rules that only withdraw indefinite leave to remain (ILR) status if someone has broken the law. However, the statement has raised alarms for many as a signal of “dangerous times” and belonging to a broader political conversation.
Growing Trend of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
In the past few months, leaders across political parties have adopted anti-immigration language and echoed proposals that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader expressed dissatisfaction about “numerous advertisements” seemingly including “black and Asian people”, and in September, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“I don’t accept that the implications of that phrase were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said Martin Forde KC, who has investigated claims of discrimination within Labour.
The barrister, whose family emigrated from the Caribbean, said the remarks were a barely concealed racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added Forde. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the sole solution to Reform is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually talk about the benefits of migration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be truthful.”
National Mood and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has surged in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to the capital, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of far-right marches from decades past and concerned the UK is “going backwards” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said an immigration lawyer, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the heart of the Windrush scandal, in which Britons from the Commonwealth residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her parent, who moved to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Lately, her child has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Currently we see young people in their twenties and thirties who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said the attorney.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for many groups,” she continued. “The tenets of this, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with partners who hold this status, have expressed that the new proposals suggested by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and characterized the wider political debate as discriminatory, alarming and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen living in Manchester with his wife and children, said the growing support of Reform in the polls had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the last several years he has gone through the process of securing permanent residency – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he worries his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this plays out in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, he has been concerned by the increase of national symbols in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and anti-immigration protesters. Long-term, though the family has no wish to leave, they may consider it if the unfriendliness persists.
“It’s strange that in a nation where immigrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very peculiar and terrifying, long-term.”
